How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Schindler's List.
Quote #4
JEWISH GHETTO RESIDENT: Those walls keep them out. That's all I care about.
News flash—those walls were built to keep Jews in, not Germans out. But this resident reframes the situation to emphasize his solidarity with his own community.
Quote #5
SCHINDLER: People die. It's a fact of life. He wants to kill everybody? Great. What am I supposed to do about it? Bring everybody over? Is that what you think? Send them over to Schindler. Send them all! His place is a haven, didn't you know? Not a factory. It's not an enterprise of any kind. It's a haven for Rabbis and orphans and people with no skills whatsoever! You think I don't know what you are doing? You're so quiet all the time. I know, I know!
Stern's actions represent a community which Schindler—by virtue of allowing it—has inadvertently joined. He's not wearing an armband or forced to endure a nightmarish daily life, but his sympathies are with them. The factory itself becomes its own community now. The survivors even labeled themselves Schindlerjuden, Schindler's Jews.
Quote #6
JEWISH GHETTO RESIDENT: The ghetto is liberty.
This could just be a way of putting a positive face on a bad situation, or it could be a more profound statement about what the Jews are going through. The ghetto may be horrible, but it's theirs. Through that collective "ownership," they become stronger. Of course, what this particular resident couldn't have foreseen is that the ghetto was just a way station to the extermination camps once people had been worked to death.